Driving Employee Engagement

One Employee At A Time

One thing an employee survey will not do is fix the culture of an organization.

By itself, an employee survey, doesn't improve anything because they are just a diagnostic. However, they become a critical diagnostic because they start the conversations that lead to change.

Employee surveys are all data driven analytic platforms that enable companies to track employee morale. They also gauge employees’ emotional commitment to their companies. Motivated managers need these results to help them hone in on areas of concern, which leads to suggestions and action plans to improve their problems. Our goal is to pinpoint issues that are eroding employee morale, so that management can address and resolve them before they become a major crisis.

Once the decision is made to conduct a survey, the next critical step is convincing employees to take it.

To help you get the highest participation rate you possibly can, here are 5 ways to inspire employees to take the survey and give their best answers:

Guarantee anonymity. All survey results have to be anonymous to give employees the opportunity to speak openly and honestly about their thoughts and opinions. This is best achieved using an independent 3rd party research company with state of the art confidentiality procedures. Explain how it works to employees to ensure they feel confident and believe no one will ever know who said what. Make sure there is absolutely no doubt in their minds that no one can identify them and no one will know their responses.

Make it easy and convenient. Stress to employees that the survey is available 24/7 from work, mobile or from home. They can do it anywhere, anytime.

Market the survey to employees. Get senior management to publically announce their support for the survey and emphasize its importance. Then get the message out across a variety of channels and be creative! We have seen poster blasts in elevators, cafeterias, email campaigns; mention it in all meetings, make a video from your CEO and share it, run a contest between departments and offer an incentive for the ones with the highest participation rates etc. The more people who participate, the more valuable your results will be.

Share results. Let your employees know the results as soon as possible. It shows you respect them and they will feel validated when they know you are listening.

Make changes. The results pinpoint the problems, so what’s stopping you from taking action? If you don’t react to the survey results and you do nothing, you will be worse off than if you hadn’t done the survey in the first place. Your employees expect something in return for taking the survey. They are expecting you to take their thoughts and opinions seriously and do something about them. If you don’t, they will feel that you don’t care, they will feel deceived and, they will they be de-motivated and unwilling to ever take another survey again. So much for getting historical data for trending analysis!

Have some fun and incentivize it! Don’t bribe or demand employees take the survey. Choose some group incentives instead, like setting aside time for everyone to take the survey one day and bring in pizza or ice cream or something everyone can enjoy as a way of saying thanks for taking the time out of your busy day.

Start the conversation with an employee survey and get everyone involved. That initiative alone shows that you care and, it’s a positive way to drive employee engagement in your organization.

About

Insightlink Communications are experts in employee survey design, data collection and analysis. Since 2001 we've helped companies of all sizes measure and improve their employee satisfaction and engagement.